Fritz Bayerlein

Fritz Bayerlein (14 January 1899-30 January 1970) was a Lieutenant-General of the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany who commanded the Panzer Lehr division during World War II. During the Falaise Gap campaign of 25 July-21 August 1944, Panzer Lehr lost all of its tanks and infantry units.

Biography
Fritz Bayerlein was born on 14 January 1899 in Wurzburg, Franconia, in the German Empire (present-day Germany). He joined the Bavarian 9th Infantry Regiment in 1917 during World War I and in 1938 was sent to a military academy after serving in the Reichswehr for much of the interwar years. Bayerlein became the chief-of-staff of the German 10th Panzer Division in 1939 and fought with them during their invasions of Poland and France during World War II. During the North African campaign, he played an active role as Erwin Rommel's chief-of-staff and replaced Walter Nehring as commander of the Afrika Korps after he was wounded. He grew sick with hepatitis and was in Italy on sick leave at the time of the German surrender in North Africa on 12 May 1943.

In October 1943, Bayerlein took over the German 3rd Panzer Division on the Eastern Front in Hungary and later took over the Panzer Lehr division. Known for being humane, he refused to deport Hungarian Jews in the Panzer Lehr sector of occupied Hungary. Cardinal Jusztinian Gyorgy Seredi praised him for his humanitarianism, but he left Hungary in May 1944 to prepare for the Allied invasion of Normandy in northern France. During the Battle of St. Lo on 18-25 July 1944, Panzer Lehr was decimated by Allied air support and his forces withdrew in August 1944, having lost all of their tanks and infantry units. He refitted the division and continued to fight against the Allied Powers in the Battle of the Bulge and the campaign in Germany, and on 19 April 1945 he surrendered in the Ruhr Pocket to American forces. While in two-year captivity, he helped US Army historians in their accounts of World War II, garnering him hostile threats from other German officers. He also helped as a technical advisor to the Americans in the filming of the 1961 World War II film "the Guns of Navarone".